How to Turn Your Kids Into Responsible Time and Money Managers

We have another wonderful guest blog post from Amanda Henderson on teaching your children how to be responsible time and money managers. Many women in the Junior League of Billings are mothers. Summer is a great time to teach our children to manage their resources. Ensuring that our children are ready to be responsible members of our community and future leaders is a great responsibility and this is one valuable lesson that they will use the rest of their lives.

How to Turn Your Kids Into Responsible Time and Money Managers

Unless your child is still in diapers, it’s never too early to teach them about responsibility, time management and proper budgeting. The more they familiarize themselves with these adult skills at a young age, the better equipped they will be to handle the increasing responsibility required through their teenage years. Here are some things you can do right now to encourage this important growth.

Take on a side job (and show them how it works)

Perhaps the best way to teach a child about time and money management is to show them what it means to have a job. While it’s unlikely that having your child shadow you at your 9 to 5 is feasible for you, your child, or your company, what you can do is get them involved in your side gig. This way, they can see how you rearrange your schedule to make time for it, as well as how you use the extra money to fill in gaps in the household budget. Taking on an extra job like dog walking or dog boarding will not only do the trick, but will also allow you to involve your child with working experience.

Revive the classic chore chart

Anyone alive before the turn of the new century remember the classic chore chart – that instrument of household pain filled with grids, stickers, and tasks that the kids must complete. Chore charts, in the classic sense, may have fallen out of fashion a bit, but you can revive the concept in order to teach your kids about responsibility.

The main benefit of a chore chart is that it teaches kids that money is earned, not given. A priceless lesson to teach a young child is that good things will come to those who work hard. If you are struggling to make a chore chart work for your family, check out these tips.

Construct a simple budgeting exercise

You could just let your kid sit down with you while you do your budgeting, but the thousands of dollars, mortgage payments, car payments, loans, and investment portfolios will probably fly over their head. Adult budgeting is a little too complicated for children, but they still need to learn some concept of it. You can do this by creating a simpler budgeting exercise that puts their own money (whether earned through chores or given via allowance or gifts) on the line.

The Balance suggests a “three jars” method (popularized on Sesame Street!) that forces your child to put their money in a “spend”, “save”, or “share” jar. This roughly mimics the concept of disposable income, savings and investments.

Let them create their own daily schedule

Kids who are simply whisked off to location after location and told what they’re doing on the fly will never develop a true sense of what it means to manage their own time. Instead of telling your child that they have to do something at X time on X day, give them a crack at making their own schedule.

Here’s how it works: You give them a comprehensive list of everything they need to do in one day. This could include school, sports practice, chores, meals and play time. You’ll then (with some guidance, of course) let them try to budget their time.

As parents, we sometimes attempt to shield our kids from the boring, grown-up stuff. While it’s important to let kids be kids, it’s also important to realize that they won’t be kids forever. And it’s doing them a disservice to fail to expose them to true responsibility, time management and budgeting at an early age. They will thank you later.

The Junior League of Billings, Inc. (founded in 1954 and incorporated in 1970) is an organization of women committed to promoting volunteerism, developing the potential of women, and improving the community through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers.